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EGTN Trip Day 8 – Arriving at KTO

We made it, our little Fiat got us over the mountains and through the woods. We started out in Marrakech this morning with a view out my hotel window that seems Moroccan to me? Just the coloring and architecture I think stir that emotion:

After grabbing a quick breakfast at the hotel, Max and I hit the road on our drive out to KTO. According to Google, it was going to take us 6 hours and 45 minutes but we hoped to make it in 8. The drive out was much different this time than when we last did it in November 2015. As we are entering spring there was a lot more green and we even drove through some clouds/fog as we started through the Atlas mountains. A few pictures from the beginning of the drive:

The snow capped mountains in the distance of those last two images was pretty spectacular! Then we made our way to more of the desert that I know this site to be. Now I know that I live in the Southern California desert, but this puts it in a little more perspective .

Clocking in at a time of 7 hours 15 minutes, we rolled up to the observatory and were definitely happy to be out of the car. After meeting up with the host and getting situated for our week, we jumped right into the work at hand by undoing everything we did last time! With installing additional sensors here and to complete the necessary upgrades, the first step of our install was to unplug all of the cords and set them aside in order to start with a clean sheet. Definitely one of those few steps back to go forward kind of moments. It is amazing how dusty/sandy it actually is out here:

With all the wires undone, we are now ready to tackle the work tomorrow to ideally be up and running with as many sensors as possible. We’ll see how we go! I’ll leave you tonight with an image of the sunset as seen from the door to our observatory.